For Your Own Good
by NameForsaken
Summary: Alison feels guilty about lying to her friends.


She wasn't used to this, reaching out. But she knew it was something she had to do; her life depended on it. For almost a year, she'd been stalked, threatened, and yanked around like a puppet by someone she didn't know, but who knew her all too well. A part of her was afraid her friends wouldn't believe her if she told them the truth, but mostly, she was afraid of feeling weak. Lately, that's all she'd been feeling.

She tried to gain her composure as she walked up the squeaky steps of the Fields' front porch, her heart still pounding in her chest. Whoever had been following her could be watching her right at that moment, lurking in the bushes and just waiting to pounce. As she knocked on the door, she convinced herself she was just being paranoid, and that as long as she was around her friends, her stalker wouldn't dare come out of hiding.

Emily answered the door with the same loving smile she always wore when she saw Ali, a smile that assured her she was going to be okay. "Hey! It's about time you showed up."

Alison rolled her eyes, the overwhelming feeling that had been weighing her down all day suddenly disappearing. "Are you going to let me in, Em, or are you going to make me stand out here in the rain all night?"

"Right." The tall brunette stepped back as Alison entered the house, her eyes immediately averting to the floor as she led her through the hall. "The girls are in the living room," she continued. "We've been waiting for you."

"Well, wait no more," Ali responded in a much louder, more confident voice. "I have arrived." She turned the corner, strutting into the living room with the biggest, sweetest grin she could muster. Sitting in a circle on the floor were her three other best friends, Spencer Hastings, Aria Montgomery, and Hanna Marin. "What are we all talking about?"

Aria, the tiny, quirky girl with pink-streaked hair, shot her head up, her face flushing. "Oh, nothing, really," she mused, her pitch rising in that telltale way that Ali knew meant that the girl was lying.

"Nothing as in Noel," Alison said flatly. She lowered herself to her knees in the center of their circle, and turned her attention back to Emily. "Sit, Em. I'd _love_ to hear what you think about Aria's little crush."

Emily narrowed her eyes at her, obviously taken aback by the double meaning in Ali's remark, a meaning that the other girls couldn't understand. Still, she obeyed her friend, and slowly lowered herself beside Alison and the other girls. "Noel's a sweet guy," she murmured.

The other girl gave her a half-smile. "Thanks, Em." She turned her attention back to Alison. "So what took you so long to get over here? I think Spencer and I have called you at least three times in the past hour."

_Like hell I'm checking that phone again_, Ali thought to herself, distractedly twirling one of her blonde curls around her index finger. When she realized all eyes were on her—as always—she just sighed, and blurted out the first excuse that came to mind. "I was helping Jason get his high ass out of the house before my dad came home from work."

Spencer, the thinner, paler brunette, frowned. "Since when did you help your brother with anything?"

"Since when did I have to start answering to you?" she snapped, coming off much more defensive then she'd meant. Instead of apologizing, though, she just shrugged off the awful feeling in the pit of her stomach, and tried to change the subject. "I hear the Kahns are going out of town next weekend for some fundraising event in New York. It'd be the perfect time for you to do a little background check on Noel, Aria."

Aria's pearl-like eyes widened. "You mean, like, _break in_ to his house?"

Alison cocked an eyebrow. "Unless you have a better idea to win his heart."

"I thought we agreed that we weren't going to do anything like that anymore," Spencer interrupted, a disapproving look on her face. "After the Jenna Thing—"

"We're not going to bomb the place!" Ali scolded her. "And we're not breaking in, I happen to know the code to the Kahns' security system."

Her friends all stared at her in disbelief. "How'd you manage to crack that?" Emily asked her.

"Does it matter?" she responded innocently, winking at the jock. "Aren't you guys the least bit curious about what Noel's hiding in his underwear drawer?"

Aria started to shake her head. "It's not that big of a deal, Ali. Noel will never notice a girl like me, anyway." She ran a hand through her pink streaks, hiding her face from the blonde. Alison wanted to sympathize with the girl, and she _did_, but she never would've admitted it out loud. Aria didn't realize how pretty she could actually be if she'd just get rid of the pink hair, and stop acting so shy. Alison had tried everything in the book to get Aria and the other girls to break out of their shells, but because the spotlight had always been on Ali, her friends just never knew how to react when she tried sharing it with them.

"Fine," she muttered, feeling particularly drained. It was only nine-thirty on a Saturday night, and although Emily's mother was just in the room upstairs, Alison couldn't help but begin to think about her stalker again. She needed something fun to distract her from the increasing anxiety welling inside of her, but there weren't many "fun" games Alison knew that wouldn't get her into any more trouble than she was already. For once, she was sick of teasing her friends with each of their secrets that only Ali knew, and she was tired of forcing the girls out of their comfort zones with countless games of Truth or Dare. What she wanted more than anything was to get some sleep, but she knew if she turned in early, her friends would realize something was wrong.

Outside, the rain was really starting to pick up. The girls could distinctly make out the sound of branches scraping against the sides of the house, and for a moment, Alison swore she heard a scream—until she realized that it was the wind. Feeling out of her element, she excused herself to use the bathroom. When she was by herself again, she locked the bathroom door, and leaned against the cool, ceramic sink, not daring to meet her reflection in the mirror above.

Closing her eyes, Alison wondered to herself what she'd done to deserve such torture. Sure, she could be a cruel bitch when she wanted to, but she never thought she'd gone far enough to actually have someone follow her around and threaten her every move. What not a lot of people realized was that she had a lot more going on in her life than just some psycho stalker, and it wasn't always easy putting up a good front for her friends and classmates. It wasn't easy being a pothead's younger sister, especially since her parents weren't home nearly enough to witness any of the disastrous things Jason had done while he was high or drunk. And it definitely wasn't easy knowing something about her family that could ruin her parents' marriage, and having to keep it to herself or face the consequences…. If Aria only understood why she was so hard on her all the time.

She hated feeling vulnerable and desperate. If anyone in Rosewood knew that _the _Alison DiLaurentis was really a softy underneath all the sass, she'd spiral down the social ladder faster than she could blink. Not that she really cared about what other people thought, but her popularity was the only thing she had, other than her friends, who would still be anything _but _popular if she hadn't taken them under her wing.

"I can't do this," Ali whispered to herself as she gazed around the neat, rustic bathroom. Her heart sank as she listened to her friends laughing from down the hall, a sign that they didn't need Alison in order to have some fun. What good was she to them if all she ever did was judge, tease, and belittle them? They've had good times, but lately, it seemed like every word that left Alison's mouth was yet another insult or trick. She was lying to them, more than any of them had ever lied to her, and it was wrong. But she was protecting them by not telling them the truth, right? She was keeping them safe from the person who'd been making her life a nightmare for months. She loved her friends, as dorky as they could be sometimes, and because she was their leader, it was her job to make sure nothing ever got in their way. So why did she feel so bad about the whole thing?

Just as she was on the verge of her breaking point, a knock carried into the walls of the bathroom, momentarily distracting her from her ill feelings. "Ali?" a small voice said from the other side of the wall, and she recognized it instantly as Hanna's. "Are you almost done?"

She sucked in a deep breath, and reached for the door. She gave the plump blonde one of her signature smiles, but inside, she felt as though her heart had permanently frozen over. "I'm good," she said. "It's all yours."

Hanna nodded, and watched skeptically as Ali left the bathroom, and disappeared down the hall. When the bathroom door closed behind her, Alison pretended as though she couldn't hear the girl's coughing and heaving. It was supposed to be a secret, but she knew her other friends could hear, too. But no one had ever bothered to ask Hanna why she did what she did. After all, it was all Alison's fault, and she figured the girls probably already knew that, too.

Back in the living room, Emily had begun to flip through television channels while Aria and Spencer chatted animatedly about something a few feet away. Emily looked as though she felt out of place, even in her own home, and it didn't take long for Alison to figure out what Spencer and Aria were talking about. Because Ali had enough of her own family drama, and she'd become too tired to butt heads with Spencer over Melissa Hastings's boyfriend, she tuned the girls out, and seated herself next to Emily on the sofa.

Emily settled on an old horror film that was airing on AMC—horrors and thrillers had always been her favorite genres to watch—and she laid the remote on the armrest beside her. She leaned back, her quiet gaze fixed on the television screen as a girl and her boyfriend crept slowly through the hallway of an abandoned lake house. Little did the couple know that just a few feet behind them, there was a crazy axe murderer lurking in the doorway, just waiting to attack.

It reminded of Alison of the prank she played on the girls during Halloween. Though her friends had forgiven her since then, the night still played in her mind occasionally, and she'd never forgotten how close she'd come to actually losing her life. Noel was supposed to be the person tossing her around in a zombie costume, but when she'd returned to his party with the girls later that night, she'd learned that Noel had been unable to make it to the old house in time for the prank. It didn't take Ali long to realize that whoever was in that costume was the same person who had been threatening her, and it terrified Alison to think that if her friends hadn't found an escape route from that house, she could've been killed.

She needed to tell her friends the truth. Whoever had hurt her on Halloween was still out there, and every waking moment that Alison was around the other girls, she was putting them in danger. But how insane would she sound if she told them that she was being followed, and constantly receiving ugly notes from an unidentified source? Even if she just played it off subtly, or hinted that she was in trouble without actually admitting it, it was still better than not saying anything at all.

"Em."

The brunette turned to her, a questioning look in her brown eyes as she waited for Alison to say what was on her mind. That was one thing she loved about Emily—she was always patient.

"Have you ever thought about what it'd be like to actually live like the people in this film?" she asked her.

Emily furrowed her eyebrows. "I love horror stories, but I'd never actually want to live in one…."

"What would you do if you had a creepy stalker analyzing every detail of your life?" she continued. "Would you tell someone, or would you try to beat him at his own game?"

Her friend just rolled her eyes. "I don't know what I'd do. But I don't think I need to worry about creepy stalkers hanging around my house. Unless you count those Jehovah's Witnesses who go to your door, trying to recruit you to their cult."

Alison grunted, Emily's comment actually managing to make her smile. "You're too cute, Em."

Her face reddened, and she turned her attention back to the movie. The female character screamed as the murderer stepped out from behind a shadow, and plunged his axe into her boyfriend's head. Alison shuddered as the girl began to run, and the murderer slung the dead man over his shoulder. She wondered morosely if she, too, would end up like that man, taking an axe or a shovel to the head by someone who had it out for her. Would anyone miss her if she died?

_I can't do this_, she thought to herself again, her mind reeling with hundreds of unanswered questions. She was Alison DiLaurentis—she was supposed to have an answer for everything. If she couldn't even be honest about someone threatening her life, then was her life even worthwhile to begin with? All she ever did was put people down, and all anyone else ever did was frown upon her actions. Even though her friends seemed to think she was perfect, she was anything but, and it just wasn't fair that they all thought so highly of her. She couldn't make one goddamned mistake without someone trying to criticize her or bring her back down. What good was a life of being a bitch? No one became successful through bad behavior or closeted ghosts.

"Ali?"

She looked up at Emily. "What?"

Her friend looked concerned. Was it that obvious that she was struggling with something? "If you want to talk, you know I'll always listen."

She gave her a half-smile. "Thanks, Em. But I'm fine." It wasn't an easy lie, but it was more than necessary. She hated lying to Emily, of all people, because somehow, no matter how snobby or insulting Alison acted toward her, the brunette always saw straight through her façade. She was the only one who had ever even tried to figure Ali out, other than Spencer, who always failed miserably. But Emily couldn't be fooled by anyone. It was what made her so special.

Alison looped her arm through Emily's, and rested her head on the jock's strong shoulders. A flicker of a grin formed at the corners of her friend's lips, but she kept her dark eyes glued to the television, and didn't move another muscle otherwise. Ali glanced around the living room, watching as Hanna returned from the bathroom, and joined Aria and Spencer in the middle of the floor. The girls talked quietly, their expressions calm and content, as if neither of them had a care in the world. They didn't know that their best friend was in danger, but maybe it was better that way. Alison closed her eyes, forcing back tears as she thought about her tormentor one last time. She decided that night that she wasn't going to let Evil –A control her life; no matter what she had to do, she was going to put an end to the threats, even if she died doing it. No one was going to tear her away from her friends, the only good thing she had left.


End file.
